Consequences for Disguise Metagaming
A sliding scale

The sense that I got from the thread is that disguise meta is such a persistent issue that staff has given up trying to police it.

Given that staff has given up on trying to police it, I believe that in the rare instances where it does come to staff attention, there should be severe consequences.

The 'solution' has been to expand 'disguise' and 'appear' functionality to allow players to radically change their characters' appearance so as to make it extremely difficult to tie two different presentations of the same character to each other. And the 'balance' to that has been to allow anyone to attack any disguised character for any reason without justification. Finally, the balance to THAT balance is the slight chance that a meta-gaming player might attack someone more powerful than they intended and because of that suffer unintended consequences.

The most obvious "problem" with that system is that the more powerful a character becomes, the less likely that they are to suffer the consequences of mistakenly attacking someone more powerful than they are.

If we take the contributors to the previous thread at their word, there is a small portion of the player base who are extremely good at metagaming and making it look accidental / unintentional / blurred "Oh, I THOUGHT that was okay. I'm sorry."

Given that dynamic, I suggest that the game needs a sliding scale of consequences for characters who staff catch gaming the system.

The scale should have two elements.

1. the length that the PLAYER (not character) has been playing.

2. the leniency afforded to the PLAYER for metagaming

As 1 increases 2 decreases exponentially, to the point where a long term player gets zero leniency and loses their character if staff becomes aware of them metagaming.

It seems to me that unless people face a serious risk of losing what they are cheating for (their character), some people will always continue to skirt the edges of the system and rely on staff leniency and understanding.

I can't speak for the newbie who got metagamed on, but it seems to me that a system like this one I am proposing would go a long way to ensuring both new and long term players alike that there are serious consequences for skirting the rules.

What do you all think?

That said, I agree with what you're saying that there's a burden of IC action needed on the part of the people being exploited that isn't always reasonable to simply say 'handle it ICly.'

Here's a simple use case scenario: Player A gets disguise meta'd by player B. Both players are disguised. So now, if player A wants to take IC action against player B, the impetus is now on Player B to suddenly start metagaming who it was that metagamed them.

It's a classic race to the bottom problem. We can say 'take the higher road, and don't perpetuate the problem' but that assumes 2 things: 1) That you've just been cheated, and that you are choosing to ignore any IC consequences (usually very negative) that befalls your character and 2) That the people actually doing the metagaming here are going to.. stop their behavior? Why would they, when they're getting ICly rewarded for doing so in the form of loot, goods, data, etc.

This is just one example in what I'd consider a whole basket of worms, and I really think that this should be a significant issue discussed during the town hall.

so as to make it extremely difficult to tie two different presentations of the same character to each other.

So - what's the problem? It's not difficult? It is difficult but someone found a cheat? People are trying to metagame (with effective or ineffective results) around the perception (true or false) that there's only one salmon striped balaclava in the game?

I don't think this can be an effective community discussion without more transparency.

Just remove disguises completely from the game. I see no version of disguising that can't be meta'd. At all.

Let's say you're trying to snuff someone you know has a blue poncho and lives in the Ashlin Crown. As a countermeasure they've changed their height/weight/gender/etc. You're looking for an average mano in a blue shroud but you see an amazonia chica in one and you think, maybe that's Bob. A few stabs later, you realize you were right.

The point is that the entire process revolves around small worlding. You know it, Bob knows it. We have to accept it because that's the thing now but realistically, giving players the ability to be meta about disguises also gives them permission to be meta about everything surrounding disguises.

I totally get the rationale but there's always going to be a bit of a disconnect there and if I'm being honest part of me feels like it further privileges already OP combat archetypes who now have permission to push the violence button on a whole new class of targets.

The only thing I'd say to that is I don't know that the burden of knowledge would be as high on people doing rules enforcement as it would be on people responsible for running the game. Even if it was a lower-level position that did nothing but filter out the bulk majority of the fluff complaints that staff mentioned.

There's the stealth skill which doesn't see nearly as much use because disguise has been so powerful historically, and I think is far less used than you would expect based on the setting and thematic mechanics, in part because disguise always worked way better for much, much less UE investment the way players often used it.

I don't mean to point out the obvious here, but disguise and stealth are totally different skills for totally different things. I agree with you that disguise is way, way over-used and often at the detriment of RP in general, but it's made to do crimes that you can't do while hiding while hiding your identity.

Disguise was previously overpowered when you'd try and attack someone and then get yellow texted immediately, or not long after doing so. Even in cases where it was appropriate- such as trying to actually steal the goddamn things from people wearing them.

Appear came along as an augmentation to disguise, and made it so that there is no ICly concievable way in which you could link people to their actions unless you were physically present for the shit when it was going on, or somehow caught people mid-appear changes. This introduced some rules lawyering into the use of appear, which wasn't ideal and further placed burdens on staff to enforce. Also, not an ideal situation. It invalidated huge portions of skills, items and trades in the game- (securitech, here's looking at you, buddy!)

So now we're at where we are at now, which is maybe best place. There was certainly good intentions all along, and we've for sure seen the benefits coming out of the change, but we've seemingly made a whole new set of challenges that largely benefits existing, established combat characters at the detriment of basically everyone else.

I want to be clear- I'm really, really not a fan of the Clark Kent/Superman quicko-presto-chango that Appear is. I've left feedback as such and some ideas on how the skill can (and should, in my mind) be heavily nerfed. Because it's essentially a 'do whatever, fuck consequences' verb in much the same way disguise is, except it requires no skill, stats, time or UE investment at all to use, and acts as a force multiplier to an already over-saturated skill.

I don't have the answers, I'm just doing what I can to try and outline the problems that I've encountered with the skills and verbs interactions.

So just to be clear, when I'm 100% disguised, appeared, with my voice changed and off my normal stomping grounds, and I pull out a common weapon and then people IMMEDIATELY scream on pubsic that it's my character, then that's -not- metagaming?

Because it sure as heck looks, smells, and tastes like metagaming, and yet, it's still happening constantly, just like it was happening constantly beforehand.

I stand by my experiences. Appear did almost nothing to curb the metagaming that was, and is still going on. People are still doing incredibly grasping-at-any-straw conclusions on things daily, even when it makes literally zero IC sense. Except now we're being told to handle it ICly, which really isn't a good solution for what I'd say is the vast bulk of the playerbase.

There's also a lot of ignorance where enforcement of the rules is concerned, considering that these 'spooky OP combat characters' people seem to have an issue with always have GM eyes on them. If they go around doing stupid shit they can make waves, which is why they're very careful about what they do.

I really like the current system, despite the fact that I've been paranoid about being meta'd out several times and that I've lost a significant amount of chy and gear while getting used to it. I still do all the work required to ID people before I attack them and I've only ever been wrong once, which was months ago.

I'm not sure if all the paranoia is even justified. There are multiple ways someone could be ID'd and multiple reasons your PC could find themselves being suspected for something. It's not as if the GMs go ahead and have NPCs believe every accusation either, there has to be evidence.

Also totally disagree with making all the disguises more similar because then we're just going back to disguises because total shields against any consequences.

Basic facts:

1. You have every tool you need to disguise yourself exactly as perfectly as you did previously... You simply have to play head games with both the player and the character.

2. If you want to be unseen doing shady shit... Take stealth in addition to disguise. That provides a second layer of security to yourself. And act in concert with each other.

3. Never assume things are flat meta, when the simple fact of assuming meta is in and of itself meta. There's always a degree of wiggle room there. And it should only be with staff confirmation that meta accusations happen.

4. Something something, one disguise is never enough. Never be seen with your disguise on as yourself.

5. If you cannot disguise your identity into a consistent persona. You are not effectively disguising yourself, and should not expect to not stand out in a crowd. In general the systematics that occur are such that. A base disguise should conceal your identity but not from those who might know you exceptionally well or have studied you and your behaviors.

Oh, cameras got taken down? Must have been player 1, 2, or 3 with relevant skills.

Someone cooking drugs? Well I know characters 3, 4 & 5 have those skills.

Someone whip out a tommygun? Well, clearly that's Player #8 because they're rich and use smudges.

No amount of disguising is going to change that without active enforcement.

@beandip

Two things:

1) That's a great point that the change in policy isn't representative of actual rules as written in-game. That should probably be changed ASAP, since only a portion of the playerbase use the boards.

2) Expansions/enhancements to the disguise system is only going to lead to the skill being even more mandatory than it already is, and doesn't stop the people who are acting out of line, it just makes the shenanigans even more blatant.

With the system before you were prevented from investigating people who you know have reasons to wrong you just because they were wearing a cloak. It's for this reason that I say active enforcement of every incident where someone is killed while disguised is the wrong way to go.

Someone has pulled down a bunch of cams, shot your output, stolen your ride. The starting point for your investigation should be those who have either done so in the past or are against you and have the skill to pull these things off. Not the ambient population of however million people who are far less likely to have been involved.

You can be as well disguised as you want to be but if you're doing the same thing this week that you did last week, against the same PC or faction, then you're a suspect.

Yes, there's only X number of people with maxed out skill in Y skill. And while yes, it's perfectly logical to make assumptions off that knowledge, it also isn't healthy for the overall RP state of the game to do so. It also totally ignores skills that players have spent days, weeks, or months of real time training skills specifically to counteract this very thing.[/b]

If we're going to smallworld 24/7, can I have a UE reset? Because I know, personally speaking, I have a heck of a lot of UE invested into skills that aren't doing shit for me right now because people are casually ignoring them.

There are ways to be nearly 100% undetectable though, even in the mix. If you know how things work then you can disguise well enough to confuse every PC who may be after you. In my experience most just don't go far enough when trying to hide.

Meta can often be hard to prove, this is what I meant in the discussion when I mentioned that it's particularly pernicious when done by more experienced players against newer ones. If questioned by staff and you can give a modicum of reasoning behind your attack on someone (and you probably can provide that even if it's drek), you're likely to be given the benefit of the doubt in most cases.

This kinda of meta bleeds in in other ways, as Baguette has pointed out. There may only be a couple of active deckers or riggers or really high-UE secure techs around particularly in a given sector at a given time, if something big goes down that affects you or your group, it's super easy to jump after those couple of people with zero evidence just saying 'well Jane Baka has a reputation.....'. There's an IC reputation for certain archetypes even, e.g. 'not many riggers in the city, you know?' Which is silly. Thematically there are tons, but it's the OOC meta bleeding in and people use this kind of thinking all the time.

But because there are little ways to justify your IC reasoning even if it's a stretch, you can get away with quite a lot if you're willing to not feel guilty about it. This was OP's point to begin with, that player accountability can't really be relied on by and large -- game history has proven that, when it comes to players and staff alike -- and he's trying to see if there's some way to innovate some form of enforcement without backtracking to how things used to be, which consensus seems to agree was also not ideal.

I can't even think about how much it sucks to be at the top of your field with years of investment and be unable to do anything with your skills because if you do, the metagamers know immediately that it is likely you and can get at you freely over it.

Really crazy..

If you steal a car and suddenly players or puppets pop out of the ether and say "YOYOYO! JoeBaka is stealing my ride!" when you're shrouded in the driver side- that's one thing.

When you've stolen half a dozen cars in the past three weeks and have gotten caught multiple times ICly doing it- and then cars still keep going missing- that's not meta to call someone out and say 'Hey- this person has a track record of XXYYZZ, maybe they're the first person we should be looking at when my car goes missing.'

Change stealing cars for other skills, and you'll get my point. Jameson's not wrong in that technical skills are -WAY- easier to single people out on. At the same time, you can't just go around getting caught numerous times doing the exact same shit and then cry foul when people naturally assume it's the same character doing the same actions.

The waters get way muddier when you're talking about skills that a dozen or more people are proficient in at any given time (example- basically any weapon skill that's fairly mainline used.)

Bring up a valid point. If a character develops a reputation for getting caught doing something on a regular basis, it is reasonable to put them on the list of usual suspects when something like that happens again.

That is not what this thread is about.

This thread is about how to deal with players who are caught by staff small worlding and being meta about disguises.

Once a player has been playing here long enough, there really isn't any excuse that is good enough.